Comment on Tutorial :XML and Java - Parsing XML using Java Tutorial By totheriver.comThe SAX Parser code has a problem for files of greater than 2048 bytes. The SAX Parser only reads in 2048 bytes at a time which could lead to an error if the 2048-byte sections split your element's data. The solution I found is to create your tempVal String (or StringBuffer in my case) in your startElement method call and then add to it in the characters method call.